Erstwhile mechanical engineer and Forbes Executive Editor, with MBA from NYU. In 15 years at Forbes I covered large corporations, money managers and self-made wealth builders---and the myriad trials they all face. Joined the tech-startup ranks in 2014 as co-founder and CFO of Eyes/Only, a luxury-experience portal for high-net-worth individuals. If the mood strikes (and especially if you have a tasty-tequila rec), please send your thoughts to brett@eyeson.ly.

New Education Standards Will Fail Your Kids And America's Future If We Don't Act Now

Shakespeare's still the man, but the kids need a little Michael Lewis, too. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

School’s back in session—or is it?

If you’re a concerned parent, business owner, Human Resources director, or just a plain ol’ taxpayer, check out the Common Core State Standards—the national teaching guidelines for grades K-12 set to take effect in 2014. The Standards are not mandated by the federal government, but public schools (and some private ones) in nearly every state have begun to adopt them.

I fear the new rules will short-change future generations in a fundamental way—and America will end up paying for it.

The guidelines, which cover mathematics and English language arts (reading and writing), have ignited a debate about the amount of nonfiction material students should have to read. According to the Standards, 70% of the 12th grade reading list will consist of nonfiction works—an extra-large helping for traditionalists who fear that nonfiction doesn’t, as Sara Mosle wrote in the New York Times, “nourish the soul.”

After digging into the Standards a bit, I found a larger concern that parents, educators and students should ponder while there’s still time to make adjustments:

Within the Core’s nonfiction requirement, there is little mention of material related to business, the economy, and most glaring of all, entrepreneurship.

This is a good time to pause and consider what the Standards purport to accomplish. Here is the “mission statement,” drawn verbatim from the Common Core State Standards web site:

“The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.”

Really?

If those are truly the goals, how can business—the very engine of society, the reason that anything ultimately happens—merit so little attention in America’s primary education system?

I’m no academic, nor am I on the education beat (heck, I’m not even a parent), but the gap between what future generations are fed and the nourishment they need to participate, let alone thrive in the “real world” is growing too vast to ignore.

When I delved deeper into the Core methodology, I learned that “students who are college and career ready in reading, writing, speaking, listening and language”—the sort of students the Standards aim to churn out—should possess the following skills:

They demonstrate independence.

They build strong content knowledge.

They respond to the varying demands of audience, task, purpose and discipline.

They comprehend as well as critique.

They value evidence.

They come to understand other perspectives and cultures.

That’s nice, because it turns out these are the very ingredients of a successful entrepreneur—and more broadly, of an informed generator, allocator and preserver of capital.

Gradually I made my way to the myth-busting section of the Core Standards web site, where I found this bit of air-clearing:

Myth: English teachers will be asked to teach science and social studies reading materials.

Fact: With the Common Core ELA Standards, English teachers will still teach their students literature as well as literary non‐fiction. However, because college and career readiness overwhelmingly focuses on complex texts outside of literature, these standards also ensure students are being prepared to read, write, and research across the curriculum, including in history and science. These goals can be achieved by ensuring that teachers in other disciplines are also focusing on reading and writing to build knowledge within their subject areas.

History, science, but no business?

Piqued, I forged on to the sample-texts section (in Appendix B). Here was a range of suggested “informational” works representing a theoretical balance of material for grades 11 and 12. Hope! Of the 21 suggested titles spanning “history, social studies, science, mathematics and technical subjects,” four managed to elbow into “business” territory:

FedViews,by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy And Its Consequences, by John Allen Paulos

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell

It’s a decent start: At least the kids would have to reckon with the all-powerful Federal Reserve and America’s busted health care system, both becoming ever more their burden. (As for mathematical illiteracy…well, just read this: Financial Illiteracy Is Killing Us.)

I realize that many devoted souls toiled mightily to create the Core Standards, and I truly support their efforts. That said, we can do better.

At the least that means exposing children to the battleground of commerce; to the entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders whose decisions affect millions of people every day; to the frustration and sacrifice that all who seek success and satisfaction inevitably must endure; and to the galling and glorious world we ostensibly are preparing them for.

Below is a modest collection that hits upon a range of topics, from leadership and innovation, to economics and investing. These eight works inform, entertain, challenge, inspire and warn, with lessons that transcend both industry and era. To be fair, some may be more than high schoolers can handle. With ample encouragement, hopefully students will run down tricky concepts in greater depth, either to grasp what they’re reading or just out of abundant curiosity. (Isn’t that what the Internet’s for?) Again, the goal is to expose them to great writing while helping them compete, as the Core Standards stipulate, in the “real world.”

1. Liar’s Poker: Rising Through The Wreckage Of Wall Street, by Michael Lewis

This jaunty classic details Wall Street’s excesses in the late ‘80s and the rise of the mortgage-bond market, which would set the stage for the 2008 financial crisis. (See also from Lewis: The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine, and Boomerang: Travels In The New Third World.)

2. Barbarians At The Gate: The Fall Of RJR Nabisco, by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar

During the last presidential election, what percentage of high school students could explain how Mitt Romney made a living? Barbarians, about the largest (as of the late ‘80s) corporate buyout in U.S. history, serves as a fun, gripping primer on private equity, which in the last 30 years has become a force in the capital markets. (The book also spawned a movie—starring James Garner as F. Ross Johnson, RJR’s comically cavalier CEO—which may or may not add to the educational experience.)

3. While America Aged: How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped The NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom As The Next Financial Crisis, by Roger Lowenstein

One of the best financial writers in the business highlights the breathtaking ease with which people make promises they can’t keep, even to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. That’s a lesson worth imparting. (For more on the hazards of over-promising, check out this article: The Biggest Financial Story In America—For Years To Come.)

4. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms To Fail, by Clayton Christensen

Being competitive over the long haul requires the ability to make smart trade-offs. Christensen, a Harvard professor and towering figure in the science of management strategy, wrestles with the challenges all companies face when trying to please customers today while anticipating their needs tomorrow.

5. The Art Of Profitability, by Adrian Slywotzky

Structured as a chat between master and pupil, this breezy compilation includes 23 concise, thought-provoking case studies of companies pursuing greater profits in different ways. Slywotzky, a seasoned management consultant, with an MBA and a JD from Harvard, understands the power of a good question. (For more of those, check out The 23 Most Important Questions In Business.)

6. Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow

By age 17 Hamilton, the son of a Nevis prostitute, was George Washington’s right hand man. Not long after, he became the father of the modern banking system. Chernow’s masterful biography is worth tackling if only for a glimpse of what is possible, even at a tender age. (At a chunky 832 pages, this one’s more of a summer assignment.)

7. Naked Economics: Undressing The Dismal Science, by Charles Wheelan

Covering everything from monetary policy to free trade, Wheelan’s brisk and tangible tome should be mandatory reading in every high school.

8. Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers Is The New Way To Be Smart, by Ian Ayres

Intuition is little match for cold, hard data. That’s the lesson of Ayres’ book, chocked with examples spanning technology, insurance and social policy. Better yet, students needn’t know how to write one line of computer code to understand and enjoy it.

There is a lot at stake in this discussion. If you know someone in high school or college (or their parents or their teachers), please pass along this article. And if you have any thoughts on what kids should be reading to prepare them for the “real world,” please share by commenting on this post. Every bit helps.

For her part, Mosle—author of that New York Timeseditorial and an English teacher herself—makes a sound case for why narrative nonfiction is a cornerstone of an enriching high school curriculum. Her wistful conclusion: “With any luck, when [students] graduate, there will still be ranks of literary nonfiction authors for them to join.”

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I’m sorry Mr. Nelson, but that reading list SUCKS. Are you kidding me? “Liar’s Poker?” “Barbarians at the Gate?” High school seniors don’t know the first thing about business at an elementary level. Why would you throw complex motgage securities like IO’s, CMO’s and PO’s at them?

No, they need very basic books.

The NEA, news media and Hollywood are doing their best to make sure our youth thinks businessmen are greedy, evil monsters, and you’re helping them.

Many thanks for reading, Michael, and I appreciate your concerns. All the business bashing is tiresome, and plenty of it disingenuous. However, I don’t believe that’s what these particular books do. In fact, I think they raise a lot of important questions that future wealth creators should think hard about.

And complex as some of these topics are, the authors do a pretty fine job of bringing this stuff down to earth. Hopefully, as I wrote, the struggle prompts students to further exploration—be it in high school or beyond. (That’s of course where good teachers come in.)

Awesome Article, One book that I believe would be a good add to your list is “The Wolf of Wall Street”. Its a super easy and fun to read book that shows how the “villains” live. It touches some business topics briefly but it also show what motivates the greed and gives an entertaining first hand view of the lifestyle of excessive riches.

High School seniors need a basic course in economics. They don’t know what a basic supply/demand curve is. They NEED this knowledge. They need to know that profit is not only necessary, but moral. They need a basic understanding of the capital markets, and how they work. Lastly, they need to know how to communicate. Basic Dale Carnegie would help every student for a lifetime from Day 1 after graduation.

“The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” was my favorite read last year, and I had my children read it, and encourage all I know to read it. But these are all books that belong in Econ, History, Gov’t, classes, not English Language Arts. I think those behind Common Core want to erase our heritage, which is found in classic literature.

I feel like one of the big problems with education today is this hyperbolic noise that our educations system WILL FAIL if we don’t do whatever agenda oriented XYZ is being proposed.

Earlier generations created the best economy and the most innovations in the world without this kind of required reading list. How? They got out there and DID.

I don’t agree that we need to cram in a bunch of business and entrepreneurial reading into K-12 education. Take a step back and let kids be kids. They have plenty of time to read some of the books on the list and there is zero reason they should be forced to do it before they are old enough to vote. Now, I personally would be interested in reading some of the books on the list. But please don’t scream about how our kids are not going to be prepared for the future because they did not read any of this before graduation.

I hear you on letting kids be kids, Elise. However, there’s something to be said for giving them the tools—earlier than later—to make sound vocational choices and to understand what’s happening in the world. It’s not as if, once they hit 18, all that wisdom just drops from the sky. (I think we all can attest to that…) Perhaps the headline was draconian, but the point here is to spark a thoughtful conversation about how to best serve youngsters who, like it or not, will be competing in an increasingly competitive economy. Thanks for reading!